ALAFAIR BURKE'S THE WIFE AND THE DEBATE ABOUT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN THE CONTEMPORARY THRILLER

The Wife combines the premise of television’s The Good Wife—a prominent man’s sexual scandal threatens to bring down his career and destroy his family life—with the recent fraught discussions around #MeToo. The familiar material is handled so deftly, with vivid characterizations and effective use of different narrative perspectives, that it fully lives up to Burke’s excellent previous work, which includes one series about a west coast prosecutor and another about a New York city police officer, as well as a recent standalone novel, The Ex, that was nominated for an Edgar Award. Burke is a law professor and, perhaps not incidentally, James Lee Burke’s daughter. (Mystery-writing dynasties seem far preferable to political ones.)

Angela Powell enjoys a comfortable life of gourmet takeout and private schools in Manhattan with her husband Jason, an economics professor who has parlayed his research into a bestselling book and a lucrative consulting company that pairs investors with socially responsible projects. But when a young intern’s allegation of sexual misconduct is quickly followed by an even more serious accusation, Angela worries about how to protect her thirteen-year-old son, who was born during a traumatic period of her life that she fears may now attract media scrutiny. Determined to shield her child, and increasingly skeptical of her husband’s stories and excuses, Angela is driven to take extreme measures to protect her hard-won financial security and her privacy.

Burke alternates Angela's story, recounted in first-person chapters that gradually reveal her history amid her descriptions of the tumultuous weeks that follow the accusations, with third-person chapters describing the investigation conducted by detective Corrine Duncan. The tense and ambivalent relationship between the women is one of the novel's strengths. Jason Powell, conversely, is enigmatic: are his displays of affection and protectiveness toward his wife genuine, or is he secretly reveling in the power he enjoys over a vulnerable woman with a complicated history? The opacity of a beloved spouse is a central feature of this genre; as in Gone Girl, much turns on how mistaken people can be about one another, how self-serving we are in the partnerships we sustain out of pragmatism and habit as much as love. Many of the domestic peril novels and films feature a somewhat credulous and sheltered young woman; Angela is both older and tougher than her predecessors, which is part of the pleasure of this book.

Stop here if you intend to read the book: spoilers (but only for the first part of the novel).

And she has an intense will to survive that was forged in devastating circumstances. Angela disappeared from her working-class home at the age of sixteen and the police failed to make much effort to find her, believing she was a runaway. Three years later, she returned to her family after being held captive by a sadist. Burke avoids representing the sexual and physical violence Angela suffered in any detail, which is unusual for the woman-in-peril genre; while Canadian writer Joy Fielding has also been circumspect in her depiction of violence, most other writers—male and female—have peppered their novels with detailed descriptions.

Burke’s choice is especially interesting in light of the recent announcement of a new award for the best thriller “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered.” Her novel wouldn’t qualify—and yet her handling of violence is so careful that it seems unfair to lump The Wife in with books that use sexual violence to titillate readers.

Sara Paretsky and other mystery and suspense authors have written thoughtfully about the ethical challenges of representing gendered violence, but generations of authors have followed Poe’s dictum that “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,” obsessively portraying the same type of murder victim over and over: young, white, usually wealthy, and female.

Thriller author Sophie Hannah argued this week that while the new prize “clearly has good intentions,” it would have been more effective if it celebrated “the novel that most powerfully or sensitively tackles the problem of violence against women and girls,” rather than appearing to discourage representation.

I’ve given up on Luther, Wire in the Blood, The Fall, and many others because the twisty plots and clever dialogue aren’t worth the exposure to so many disturbing scenes. Imagery that was once restricted to horror films has made its way to television: amputations and beheadings, torture, child murders, and mutilated animals. The sheer volume of this material is overwhelming and disquieting. And most of it is directed at female characters, a “crime porn” that is upsetting for actors as well as for viewers.

The creation of a new crime fiction prize is unlikely to affect this proliferation, but it may help us have a more informed conversation. And Alafair Burke has demonstrated in this carefully paced and clever novel that one approach is to portray the traumatic wake of violence without describing the particulars of events.